“The sole cause of wars and revolutions and battles is nothing other than desire.”
—Plato
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatra greatered towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives a greater grace (James 4:1-8).
What causes fights and quarrels—border disputes, racial tension, family squabbles, marital spats, sibling rivalry, church splits? Why can’t we get along?
Conflict stems from “desire,” James insists, a Greek word from which we get our word “hedonism.” Hedonism is the philosophy that what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is the highest good. Taken to its extreme it’s the relentless and ruthless pursuit of personal pleasure without regard for others.
Trouble comes when the pursuit of pleasure puts us in conflict with another human being similarly inclined. Two people desire a pleasurable thing, but both cannot have it at once. (Two drivers converging on the last parking space at a crowded mall comes to mind.) One or the other is thwarted in his desire, a frustration that can soon escalate into anger, blows and lethal rage. “You want something, but don’t get it, (so) you kill.”
Killl? Really? It’s a fact: most homicides are not premeditated acts, but “crimes of passion (desire),” prompted by frustration and deeply regretted after the fact. The unguarded pursuit of pleasure can lead to terrifying violence. James does well to warn us.
Evill springs from frustrated desire. “It is insatiable desires which overturn not only individual men, but whole families, and will even bring down the state. From desire there spring hatred, schisms, discords, seditions and wars,” wrote Cicero, the Roman statesman.
James’ solution is profoundly simple: when you desire something—ask God for it. When in the pursuit of any passion you collide with someone pursuing his or her passion, rather than insist that your will be done—ask God. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. It delights him to give.
But there is one proviso: we must ask with a quiet and submitted will. We cannot dictate the time or terms of our satisfaction. It may be that God will give us what we desire, but give it to us later than we would like to have it. It may be that he will not give us what we want at all, but rather the satisfaction we seek from the thing desired. Satisfaction is an effect quite apart from natural cause. Its source is God alone.
What this means is that we must give our deepest desires to God and let him satisfy us hisway. The alternative—taking matters into our own hands, is “adultery”—a very apt metaphor. When we seek satisfaction on our own will apart from God’s will we are unfaithful to the lover of our souls who longs to satisfy every desire of our heart.
Bernard of Clairvaux wrote long ago, “What will you do if your needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added to them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prefer to bear the yoke of modesty and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body” (from On the Love of God).
Asking God to meet our needs is much better than getting what we want our own way, for, as James put it, God gives a “greater grace” (4:6)—greater than anything we could ever get on our own
David Roper
5.13.21
